Al-Jumhuriya - Andy Heintz The below is one of a series of interviews conducted by the journalist Andy Heintz due to be published as a book, Dissidents of the International Left, in May 2019. Yassin al-Haj Saleh is a Syrian writer, former political prisoner, and co-founder of Al-Jumhuriya, where he continues to contribute regularly. His latest book is The…
The world at the fascist moment
Al Jumhuriya - Translated by Suneela Mubayi In his foreword to Theo Horesh’s new book, The Holocausts We All Deny, Yassin al-Haj Saleh decries the present “lack of a global vision or project” capable of resisting the crisis of democracy from China through the Middle East to Trump’s America. Genocide is rare, or that is…
A critique of solidarity
Al Jumhuriya - Translated by Alex Rowell There is no reason why one shouldn’t be able to imagine Syrians, or Palestinians, or Kurds, expressing solidarity with the victims of a political or natural catastrophe in Western countries. Yet the direction of solidarity seems almost always to be the contrary; it is those in affluent, powerful,…
State extermination, not a “dictatorial regime”
Al Jumhuriya – Translated by Alex Rowell To refer to the Assad regime in Syria as “dictatorial” is a great mistake—indeed, it is the mother of intellectual, political, ethical, and human rights-related errors perpetrated against Syrians at the international level. The Assadist state is based on extermination, not mere “repression,” and as such it is…
Defeat and the state: June 1967 and Hafez al-Assad’s Syria
Al-Jumhuriya - Translator: Omar El Adl Half a century has passed since the June defeat, a period during which Syria has fallen under the rule of a dynasty built by the defense minister of the June 1967 war, Hafez al-Assad. This fact is enough to show that we are living political realities that are organically tied…
Living in the temporary
Al Jumhuriya - Translator: Suneela Mubayi The day I left Syria in the fall of 2013, I published a short essay titled, ‘On Bidding Syria Farwell… Temporarily.’ I could not leave my country for the first time without saying something, and without pledging that this was a temporary departure. Four years and five months have…
Letters to Samira (9)
Al Jumhuriya - Translated by Alex Rowell Are you aware of what’s happening around you, Sammour? No doubt you can hear the sound of bombardment, and perhaps you can guess from the noise, and the behavior of your captors, that something is different this time. Very different, Sammour. It appears the Jaysh al-Islam emirate is…
The use and misuse of genocide denial
Al Jumhuriya - Translated by Alex Rowell In response to Vicken Cheterian, Yassin al-Haj Saleh argues the link between the Armenian genocide and today’s mass murder of Syrians is tenuous at best—and that both the killing in Syria and genocide in general are better understood in terms of state power than as ethnic or religious…
Living Under Assad’s Siege
The New York Times On Tuesday, 78 people were killed in the Syrian rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta after heavy aerial bombardment by Syrian and Russian forces. The United Nations has called for a cease-fire for a month across Syria to be able to deliver humanitarian aid and evacuate the critically ill and wounded. The…
International Viewpoint: Interview with Yassin Al-Haj Saleh
International Viewpoint Born in 1961 in Raqqa, the Syrian writer and dissident Yassin Al-Haj Saleh spent a considerable part of his life in the jails of the Assad regime. Once again pursued by the regime for his revolutionary activity, he went into exile in Turkey shortly before his wife Samira Khalil, a tireless communist and…